


The Spark Within

by 5eedless, Zexeos



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Lots of Original Characters - Freeform, Robot/Human Relationships, also cybertronians are general shapeshifters and just happen to be able to turn into cars, and a whole new timeline, cybertron is run by decepticons and autobots are rebels, dealing with the nitty gritty of how humans and autobots work, good robot alien dickings in here though, there are no cars on cybertron that's fucking stupid, this is an AU roleplay turned lit, what kind of alien knows what a car is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 08:04:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21316891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5eedless/pseuds/5eedless, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zexeos/pseuds/Zexeos
Summary: The planet Cybertron is ruled by the Decepticon government following the Great War. A band of rebels known as the Autobots have fled Cybertronian space, and have found a small tech planet in the remote reaches of the universe. Here, they seek refuge from their oppressive Warlords and hope to establish a base to regroup with the remaining rebels in space. But not all is as easy as it seems, as there are small organic creatures which call this planet home, as well as Decepticons who are hot on the Autobot's tailpipes. Will our band of rebels manage to carve out a slice of peace for themselves, or will the Decepticons finally crush all opposition?
Relationships: Original Male Character / Original Female Character
Kudos: 2





	The Spark Within

The cold cut into Vanessa, making her shiver as she paced through her nearly-abandoned garage, her booted footsteps echoing off the concrete floor. The noise seemed to fill up a massive, empty space, and each step sounded like a boom in the morning silence. Soft, orange sunlight was piercing the pale blue of the morning, bathing the inside of the garage with warmth as the sun’s spindly fingers made its way through the windows. Despite the peaceful morning glow, Vanessa - Vinny - wasn’t calm. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she growled to herself as she looked at her phone. Her bank account was pulled up, reading a low balance. She squeezed her phone for a second, contemplating, before relaxing her grip on it. “Fuck,” she said sharply into the still morning air.

She paced quickly over to the work table that was against the far wall, her boots thundering once more. The desk itself was a cluttered nightmare, with drinks, drawings, books, and lots of stray letters and papers practically covering every inch of it. There was a paper on top, however, stamped with a red stamp that declared “Final Notice” against the white pallor of the paper. She picked up the bill with a trembling hand, reading the balance due at the bottom of the page. 

_ $1,367.86 due immediately,  _ it read. She growled again, her eyes narrowing as she read it. Her free hand reached up to the necklace that was worn around her neck - a gold locket with a picture of her father in it. It felt like it weighed a million pounds in that moment. She gripped it tightly for a moment, before releasing it. 

“Kiss my ass,” she declared before putting the paper back down and looking around her garage with eyes that swam with sadness. In the far corner was the staircase that lead up into her small studio - her home. The far wall was bay doors that she could open, and in the corner to the left of the stairs, a large white tarp covered something large and vaguely car-shaped. 

She blinked tears out of her eyes as she examined the grey walls of her home, and her dream.  _ I’m sorry, Dad,  _ she thought as she continued to look around.  _ I never meant for our dream to go up in flames.  _ She sighed, the weight of the world seeming to slump on her shoulders as she reached into her pocket. Pulling out her phone, she lit up the screen with the press of a button, reading the time. 

7:38 AM.

_ Gotta be at work at 8,  _ she reminded herself as she put the phone back into her pocket. Vinny walked over to the coat rack that was between the staircase and the covered car, and pulled off a black jacket to go over her band shirt and jeans. Throwing it on her body, her shivering slowed as it began to retain heat against the cold morning air. Walking slowly towards the door, she let her mind swim with dark thoughts -  _ What if I lose the garage? Can they wait until Friday for the payment? What would Dad say…?  _

Slamming the door behind her, she didn’t stay to think about the answer to that last question. 

* * *

Thankfully, the town of Manteca was small enough to walk around - at least if you knew where you were going.  _ It’s not like I have money for gas anyways,  _ Vinny thought with a sigh as she contemplated getting a vehicle to drive. It would save her time in the mornings, but there was no way she could afford a car - not that she wanted one.

Her mind wandered to the bike of her dreams. She imagined herself taking fast corners, feeling the wind through her blonde hair as she sped down the streets of Manteca. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and Vinny shook her head with another sigh.  _ Keep dreaming, girl,  _ she told herself mentally. 

It was getting harder every day to pass the car dealership that Jackson Keyes owned. It was a small lot, filled with gravel, with a tiny shack that was used as an office sitting in the corner. Behind it, there was a small trailer parked. Vinny’s heart bled whenever she saw the object of her dreams resting in the lot, alone and unloved, with a price tag so high that nobody would ever dream of buying it. (Except for her.) 

It caught the glint of the sunlight as Vinny rounded the corner, making her squint a bit. The paint was bright and fresh, and by god, was the bike beautiful. Glistening in the harsh rays, the bright red stood out like fire against the blacks and whites that accented the bold base color. The frame was sleek, made of sweeping curves that met with sharp edges in such a way that the bike looked like a predatory animal. The leather seat on top finished the picture, luxurious and firm.

She had to struggle not to stare, but it was no use. She had to get closer to it. Glancing around, she noticed no sign of Keyes -  _ Maybe he’s not awake yet, _ she hoped. She walked onto the gravel of the lot, her boots crunching as she made her way towards the bike, weaving past old, defunct cars. It stood out like a sore thumb as the only thing nice on the lot, and Vinny dreamed of this bike every night. 

There she stood before it, her heart pounding. The locket around her neck felt warm and made her skin tingle. Her whole body was tense with anticipation as she leaned forward and rested her hands on the bike, sliding them down the leather seat.

“Hey, handsome,” she told it, unable to stop herself from dreaming about what it would be like to ride this bad boy on a test run, and never come back with it. To be free, out on the open roads, the sun in her hair, wind on her back…

“HEY! Keep yer paws off the merchandise ya lil’-”

From across the lot came the old, grouchy voice of Jackson Keyes, the cheapest low-life car salesman ever to be seen in the Sacramento valley. He stood at a whopping 5’6” and had a belly about as long. His hair was balding in all the wrong places, and the stubble one might call a “beard” to be polite was only worth noting for people who had yet to speak to the man himself. The last person to be polite to Keyes while knowing who he was was probably his mother, and even that could be a big assumption for all Vinny knew.

“Oh, it’s yer scrawny broke ass,” Keyes snarled at the girl as he waddled his massive derriere out into the lot. “You fin’ly plan to buy that window ornament? ‘Bout time. Piece o’ junk’s been sittin’ in my lot e’er since ma ungrateful kid tossed it fer ‘is new Porsche. Not tha’ I reckon youse gots the cash for it, no-how.”   
  
Keyes was from the South, and not the sweet, homely part that supposedly existed there. He was like a massive pustule amidst the people of Manteca, which given how close it was to Stockton and how much of a cesspool that city could be in the wrong area, was a high bar to pass.

Vinny narrowed her eyes at the man. He was the type to say a mean thing, then laught it off like it was a joke, no harm done. She sighed and stepped back from the baike, squaring her shoulders a bit.

“I’m allowed to look,” she told him. “And besides, nobody’s gonna buy this, considering you want 14 for it. How is anybody supposed to put out that much cash for a bike that’s used?” she shot back. She looked back at the bike. The sensation of it in her vision made her skin crawl with excitement. She needed to own this bike, but there was no way she could create 14,000 dollars out of thin air. The man was insane with his prices, and sold mostly lemons to the people of Manteca, but he was the only non-company dealership that did payments, so people still continued to give him money, not that he deserved it.

“Besides, when I finally get my shop going, this bad boy’s gonna be mine anyway,” she told him proudly, making Keyes scoff.

“Yer gonna get that shithole shop up en runnin’?” he said incredulously. “Don’t make me laugh, girlie. Yer daddy dropped that shop like a sack of shit, and so should ya. Go back to yer mammy, and get out of my town,” he said to her with a glare in his eyes. Vinny’s spine crawled at the mention of her mother.

“Fuck off, Keyes. This is more my town than it is yours,” she told him, adjusting her jacket a bit tighter in the arms and shoulders.

Keyes laughed that hideous little hick laugh he’d either perfected over many years of torturing “young’uns” or been gifted with by the devil himself. “Heh! Yah shore got some fire in ya, I’ll give ya that! Find yaself a good husband what’ll get that bike fer ya, it’ll be a better life than strugglin’ to put cars in a garage nobody’s in for!” He laughed his way back into his little shop, grabbing up his newspaper from that little stool he sat in for heckling purposes.

Vinny huffed, trying to think of something to say, but for all her fire and brimstone she seemed to have burned up all her witty comebacks. She turned away and sighed, giving her dream bike one last look over her shoulder before she walked off again. Why did such a wonderful piece of work have to be in such a bad place? Vinny knew automobiles didn’t have souls, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that beautiful beast was crying every night it spent in that lot.

Vinny kicked a small rock along the sidewalk and cursed. All she needed was one good customer - one repair job, one good buy or sale, one thing to go  _ right _ for her for a change … but who was she kidding? Nobody would take their car to somewhere with no cars already in it. Nobody would bother to pay for space in her garage when they could go to a “professional” from a bigwig corporation. And, nobody would sell to her if she had no money to buy with … she was gonna be stuck working as a doctor’s secretary for the rest of her-

Vinny’s heart skipped a beat and she immediately pulled out her cell.  _ 7:58. _

“Christ!” she called out as she began to sprint out of the lot and down the street as fast as she could, her short legs pumping to propel her body. Somehow she had to make seven blocks in the time it took to clear two. She was gonna be --

* * *

“Late!” Scott cried as she burst through the employee-access door as the Calhoun Walk-In Clinic. “Vanessa Day, you are late, young lady!” He stood in the employee break room, where Vinny was bent over, panting from her impromptu morning run. 

“Yeah, yeah, write me up about it or give me enough money to buy my bike,” she muttered before standing up straight. Scott frowned at her, his glasses hiding narrow eyes that were usually pretty friendly. 

Scott Calhoun was a tall, handsome man, with fluffy black hair that still looked amazing, even though the man was nearly 50. His small ponytail hung down the back of his neck, and he had wide, thick-framed glasses on his clean-shaven face. He was in a salmon polo, with the sleeves rolled up, and some khakis that made him look fresh out of Sunday School.

“You gonna keep giving me sass?” he asked in a low, even tone, and Vinny shook her head. 

“Sorry, it’s been a bad morning,” she told him with a sheepish grin. “I’ll go get clocked in and started, though - how many appointments do we have this morning?” 

Scott frowned and tapped his foot. “8,” he told her. “And you have 15 minutes to check them all in.”

Vinny chuckled nervously as sweat began beading over her brow. She turned and rushed straight for the clock.

The next fifteen minutes were just about the most hectic she had ever experienced … is what Vinny would have liked to have said, but this wasn’t the first time that she’d been late to work at this secretary job. If she wasn’t careful, even Scott’s seemingly boundless generosity was sure to wane thin … he was already pulling her ass out of the fire by giving her work, why did she have to make things harder on him because of it?

To a large extent, Vinny had no idea why Scott put up with her so much. Sure, her father and Scott had been close friends, but that didn’t have to mean anything that Scott didn’t want it to. He had every right to tell her to fuck off and find something reasonable to do with her life, but he never once tried to convince her to give up on her dream. He never really encouraged it either, but sometimes respectful acceptance was all she really needed.

Despite her lateness, Vinny somehow managed to get the last appointment squared away just before her timer went off. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief from behind her little open-view desk. Work wasn’t over yet of course, not by a long shot, but she’d gotten through crunch time without too much trouble. Or at least, that’s what she had to tell herself to keep her sane.

Vinny glanced around at the people she’d just been checking in - she hadn’t really had enough time to look at their faces over the paperwork. There were a few of the regulars, of course. Mrs. Greenbaulm and her daughter Christy were playing cat’s cradle in the corner, resident jock Timothy was trying to wink at Vinny, who frankly couldn’t care less. Old Man Franklin was sitting with his cane, reading a newspaper.

Vinny squinted at the front page. “Manteca Meteor Shower Has Left City Stunned!”  _ Oh yeah … that did happen the other night, didn’t it?  _ Vinny blinked as she remembered hearing about it on the radio that played in her garage regularly. It was the talk of the town for a night, and not even the local government had answers. Most meteor showers had a well enough warning, but this one seemed to come out of the blue, and if what the locals were saying was true, some of them even touched down.

She shook her head.  _ Just a bunch of gossip for a quiet town,  _ she decided. She looked back at her computer, plugging away at some registry files for a second.

“Hey, hey,” a familiar voice said, which made Vinny roll her eyes. 

“Timothy, a pleasure as always,” she said without looking up at the chestnut haired, admittedly handsome, college football star. He sounded generic as all hell, but Timothy was sweet. He even took Vinny to their senior prom, several years ago. “How goes school?” she asked him.

“Oh, just finishing up my Econ degree,” he told her with a smile. Vinny was surprised that he wasn’t on a magazine of some type. “Should be graduating next semester, which is cool.”

She looked up and gave him a polite smile. “Yeah, that’s awesome!” she told him. It wasn’t that Timothy was a bad person, they just were too awkward and formal with each other to make any interactions comfortable. 

“So, uh… Doctor Calhoun should call you for your physical here in a bit,” she told him. “But is there anything I can help you with?” she tilted her head as she asked him.

Timothy blushed a bit, caught in his act. “Uh, yeah, I was just seeing how long it would be… gotta get back to Stockton’s campus, I’m just here on a free day for this,” he explained, as if it were going somewhere.

“Ah, I see. Well, enjoy your free day. I’m sure you’ll find some way to enjoy yourself after turning your head and coughing.” Vinny’s tone was even, but she didn’t mean to be so sharp. It’s just that after this paperwork was done, she had a mean game of solitaire to get back to…

Timothy blanched and left to head back to his seat without another word. 

* * *

Vinny breathed a long sigh of relief as the last patient of the day left the building. It wasn’t necessarily a ‘busy’ day after those first fifteen minutes, but the thought of a whole bunch of people waiting in front of her always made her uneasy. She looked around for her boss, wondering vaguely if she could leave yet, and found him leaning his head out from his office door.

“Guess who made sweet tea?” Scott chuckled as he handed Vinny a cup and pulled up a seat. “I think we’re pretty much done for the day … but, nothing’s stopping us from sitting on our butts and talking shop, right?”

Vinny chuckled as she adjusted herself in her chair, taking the warm cup in her hands. It smelled awful, and was green instead of black, but she wasn’t in any spot to complain. “I guess not,” she told him with a smile. “What do you wanna chat about, boss?”

“‘Boss?’ Since when did you start respecting your superiors?” Scott snickered in his traditional sassy fashion. “Well, you mentioned having a bad morning - everything going okay?”

“I’ve just had… a lot to think about this morning,” she said. “And… I wanted to thank you for putting up with me all this time. I was late because Keyes was giving me shit and I was fussing over late bills this morning,” she admitted while looking down into her cup. “I might lose the garage if I can’t make rent next week.”

Scott’s snarky attitude dropped the moment serious talk came out. He fixed his glass and reclined in his chair, both hands on his cup as he looked out the window and onto the street in front of them. “Y’know, I didn’t exactly build this office with the consent of my family. Dad wanted me to work for some organized hospital, and Mom wanted me to be a lawyer. Even my peers thought that starting up my own clinic was basically financial suicide.”

Vinny blinked at him. She felt like she knew where he was going, but she waited for him to finish.

“I’m not gonna lie to you … it was hell. Getting this place up and running, getting people to actually give it a shot … I identified with your father a lot in those days. I know being a mechanic and being a doctor are very different jobs, but you’d be surprised how similar they can feel when you’re trying to be independent about the affair.”

Scott sat back up in his chair and sipped his tea, sighing gratefully for his green leaf juice. “There were times when I thought it’d all go up in flames … and it’s only gotten harder since those days. No way could I have made it happen if I didn’t have people working with me. People like your Dad. I don’t think I’ll ever repay him enough … so I might as well pay it forward. I won’t tell you what you oughta do, but … you are the person who knows that best.”

Vinny nodded. “Thanks, Scott, I appreciate it,” she told him, looking out at the sunset idly. Her chest felt tight, and her locket weighed a thousand pounds around her neck. “I’m just trying to keep our - his - dream alive as best as I can. It’s just hard without him around, you know?” she sighed. “But I won’t be giving up. I’ll make rent this paycheck, and then I’ll have another month to find jobs, to be better.” She nodded, to both herself and to Scott with determination. “I won’t let Dad down, and I won’t let you down either.”

* * *

The cool, dark air seemed to press onto Vinny as she walked home, her black jacket clinging to her body as she tried not to shiver. The fall nights were growing cooler by the day, and Vinny would have to swap to her coat soon enough. She walked down the sidewalk, on the same route she walked on the way to work. It was familiar to her, enough to where she didn’t have to think too much about where she was going - her feet just propelled her. 

The dark shadows of the night loomed over her, and she felt a little on edge. Manteca was safe enough, but there was always dangers lurking, and Vinny wasn’t about to go down without a fight. As she rounded the corner onto 12th street, the noticed Keye’s car lot in the distance. His trailer was closer, but there was no car parked in the driveway - was he gone for the evening? Vinny’s heart skipped a beat, a dark thought racing in her head. What if she just looked at the bike some more while he was gone…?

She quickened her pace, walking down the sidewalk a little faster than before. She wanted to see that handsome bike one more time, to continue to dream about how she would look on it. As she grew closer, her train of thought was crashed by a loud noise - metal scraping against metal.

Someone was messing with Keye’s cars.

Rushing in, Vinny sprinted towards the car lot. The first thing she noticed was that there were several cars, resting upside down on their cabins. She paused --  _ What?  _ She was thinking about what would do that, before looking to her left after another car groaned as it was moved. 

And that’s when she noticed the red robot gently flipping the cars.


End file.
